10. Grief

As Alex mentioned earlier, one of my great regrets is when I stemmed her grief after our miscarriage. I had heard stories from a mentor of loss after loss due to a medical condition and tried to copy the way that he and his wife had come to deal with their losses. Looking back on it I expect that they mass grieved and pre-grieved allowing them to push through when their losses would occur in the midst of an important project they were invested in. I misunderstood their story and misapplied it to our lives.

I had tried to short circuit the grieving process by denying the loss, this damaged both of us. Instead of inviting Jesus into that wound and seeing what would happen, I was afraid (deep down on an unconscious level) that he wouldn’t be enough to handle it. That the unexpected and non-understandable loss would somehow prove he wasn’t who I thought he was. How could He have both promised us a child through specific dreams, conquered my infertility long enough for one miracle pregnancy and then allow our child to leave us only days after we knew of its existence? I didn’t want to risk exposing what I believed about Jesus to this inconvenient reality. So I didn’t.

Around four years later Kiaus, a good friend of mine, was brave enough to take the time and effort it required to gently expose that this ignoring was harming my faith not protecting it. With his continued prayer and loving questions I finally allowed myself to be real with Father, to be genuine about the questions, anger and sorrow I was experiencing in this fallen world. And in that process I discovered that instead of feeding my doubts or attacking my faith, it allowed me to recognize His sorrow and receive His embrace in the midst. Acknowledging the mystery of living in the “now but not yet” helped me discover first hand that a lack of understanding (even an exposed lack of understanding) doesn’t trump His peace and comfort. They can and do coexist.

Shortly after, I repented to Alex and encouraged her to bring the reality of her loss to Father as well and she has since embraced her own grief journey (which looks very different from mine).